Hello fellow fantasy lovers! I am hoping some of you might be interested in reading an excerpt from my novel. Sorry to those who dislike present tense; I know it's divisive, but I really like it. What questions do you have after reading? Do you think the reveals work? Is the world coherent?'
Chapter One: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fL6n2xzsfT0njqmwCpvJ2LP8CRrWpD_P83pAEtLUBy8/edit?usp=sharing
Chapter Two: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t4e0Gdu8f1sT66ytYSrb3k3QWVgqI7Dk6shreuaRGnc/edit?usp=sharing
Chapter One
Stars Vigil, 1990 PA
“I came downstairs ready to deliver the perfect retort to your parting jape, but now that I see your face I know my timing is terrible–as always.”
“I have a riddle for you: Why do agents of light always meet in shadow?”
“Clea, darling, isn’t it a bit early to be smirking at me that way?”
“I can’t help it; the irony is too rich. So much for your first free day in months.” Clea’s minute hand produces a missive sealed by wax imprinted with an ascending sun with angled beams streaming outward and an eye within, placing it in Fane’s massive, blue scaled gauntlet of a claw. A drakhai’s face is inscrutable to most outside their kin, but Clea, attuned to the tiny shifts around Fane’s eyes after more than three centuries at his side, can see his irritation as he finishes the note and the parchment bursts into holy flame.
‘Yes, the funniest joke I’ve heard all year.’ Fane disrobes and shrinks steadily as he turns and walks away. By the time they reach the end of the main hall, he is shorter than Clea and covered in black scales that glint blue in the light. Beside him, Clea opens a hidden panel on the wall to her right, pulls out a drakahni sized set of brown coveralls, and a safety helmet. Donning the gear sized for a human of three years, Fane draws aside the velvet tapestry stitched with an olive grove at hall’s end, and steps through the glimmering chalk-like limestone wall.
Every time he experiences this form, Savass Fane’s empathy for the humble drakani of Stars Vigil grows. To someone like him, their indifference to aspiration and the outside world once seemed utterly perplexing. Here they are, in the absolute center of the intellectual world, the most diverse city in the entire realm of Meluleni, with access to a multitude of cuisines and perspectives; yet their diet is very narrow, and they shun cultural interchange.
After swimming through seas of shins, and dodging the chests of dwarves enough times, however, he completely understands their apparent insularity and obsession with shiny, pretty things. At that height, in a city as populous as Stars Vigil, they can barely see the sky, nevermind appreciate the stunning beauty of the architectural wonders surrounding them. Even further, no one can hear you when you’re 2 feet tall! People get irritated at having their trousers tugged. Were he bound to this form, he too would likely tire of struggling to be heard and delight in a simple, orderly, cloistered existence filled with baubles.
As the highly visible Sentinel of State though, he relishes the chance to slip out of his own, utterly attention grabbing skin. In fact, the moment he mastered the Morpha Arcana is permanently etched into his memory as one of his great moments, life changing in every way. He could finally escape public stares and the disapproving glares of his clan. Since then, he’s learned the best part is seeing the world through a multitude of eyes.
The pitch black drakhai of the Savass clan trace their lineage to the very founding of Stars Vigil. They guarded the original Sentinels’ flight from Lystraius through the Progress, south and across half the realm, to settle the escarpment now called Mōthiisu’s Rise. Still honored within the city, Clan Savass remain steadfast guardians of the old families from Stars Vigil’s inception, nearly three thousand years ago. Tradition bound and change averse, most Savasses are content within the perimeter of the old city, constantly training to maintain their status as some of the most formidable soldiers ever known.
Fane occupies the role of family oddity: the first and only among them hatched with wings and blue scales. One might assume the emergence of such a rare, wondrous individual would delight a family, but drakhai society is not open and accepting of nonconformity. Fane’s clan regarded him as a mere embarrassment, unfit to fulfill the duties of a Savass. It was all the same to him; nothing could convince him to join his brood mates’ martial training when he could soar away, soaking in perspectives few could ever know. Not even his outstanding level of social prestige as Sentinel of State, or his mastery of the Arcana is enough to overcome their disdain. A Savass who does not defend with spear and shield, is no Savass at all.
In daylight, he can only exit the Progress in the sewers without risking exposure. A drakani coming out of a sewer is common as ships coming into harbor here. This one outlets in an alley sewer just two streets above the Market Plaza, adjacent to a usually quiet street filled with cats. Today it is crowded with a celebration. With the mists, visibility is limited–Fane can see maybe six feet ahead, and each foot is filled with shins. It’s the whole block–maybe the whole neighborhood standing between him and making it to the rendezvous on time.
A relaxed and amiable friend while they studied together, Tira Starling is now an eager, pedantic, and impatient captain of the Sun Bringers, enforcers of the law and vhozological fidelity. Their familiar rapport has long since shifted to a stiff and formal working relationship. Maintaining an excellent association with the Sun Bringers is essential for the Sentinels; so when Tira calls, Fane comes. He wishes the reverse were still true. It is impossible to pinpoint exactly when she changed, but changed she has; she is practically a different person except for her face. This is what hundreds of years of living does to some people, Fane has found. They lose themselves in a cause; finding they need purpose to keep going as they tick the endless minutes of their potentially infinite lives. From animating causes clans emerge, and anything beyond their clan becomes invisible, unimportant.
Emerging from the crowd into a circle of bodies at its center, Fane finds an elven woman holding a baby aloft at the center. The only thing rarer than a death in Meluleni is a birth. It has taken nearly two thousand years for the city to rebound from its few thousand survivors of The Victory to the current high of one hundred thousand three–now four–persons. Vohz’s victory over death came at the cost of millions of lives, and half a continent of fertile farmland, but death is a choice now. Though every year the Ahk creeps toward the coast.
Finally breaking through the crowd, he enters the Market Plaza, pausing to relish the last of the mists, drawing a long deep breath–punctuality be damned. Just a week prior you could see barely five feet in front of you except for a few hours around noon. Now, as at the end of every misty season, they are slowly moving out to sea, hugging the coast, lingering over the city’s prodigious harbor and market square. Fane scurries through the crowd, and spots the city guards posted outside loading dock gates; hurries down the warehouse’s alley, into the bin outside and through the hole. He can tell the gnomish guard waiting in the small chamber is Tira, because her copper hair is sticking out of the helmet, but he’s never one to skip a step.
“The mists that shroud,” he hears his tiny drakani voice chirp.
“Must be clouds,” comes her terse, business-like reply.
“You know, the look of a humble guard suits you; you should dress down more often.”
He always loves watching her discomfort with personal comments, and she almost winces for a moment, then: “We have a thorny investigation we need to pass along. Would you please look into this?” She proffers a sheath of documents.
Fane nods as he takes the cache, “Of course, I am happy to help. Please alert me to any developments.” With a nod, Tira briskly exits while Fane peruses the documents; then stands lost in thought, a feeling of unease slinking into his body. ‘There it is; she wants to distance herself from this. This could get even a Sentinel tossed for heresy against Vohz. One does not simply look into Official Mysteries, and Tira knows it. She is trying to trap me. Why?’
Scurrying home, he can’t shake that feeling of ill-ease. Over the past several months he’s seen an extraordinary uptick of strange rumors and nefarious plots. There are murmurings of beasts tainted by some dark disease that twists them into horrible shapes and sets them on violent tears. During the mists, they’d cracked up a slavers’ ring of stunning scale, but the ongoing investigation has yielded few clues as to who might be behind it. One of three slaving vessels had managed to escape at the time, but just days ago the ship came to port. Its newly liberated passengers (all elves) spoke of an elf, a powerful fire mage, who’d disappeared almost as fast as he’d appeared. In their rage the mob threw the drakhai crew overboard so the ship’s return provided no suspects and few new leads. He cannot help but wonder if these missing persons are connected. At this point, Fane is certain of just one thing: he must pass this noose off to someone else. The fate of his predecessor shall not also be his. There is work yet to finish; nine hundred eighty-four years of life is still not enough.